Mars Technology Program communications and tracking technologies for Mars exploration

The future of the exploration of Mars see an unprecedented increase in the volume of data generated by an increasingly capable host of science instruments on various rovers, aerobots, orbiters and eventually humans on Mars. To return these large volumes of data to Earth, communication links with data-rate capabilities in the multiple megabits-per-second are required. The Mars Technology Program (MTP) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the California Institute of Technology, has invested in a technology development portfolio, the Communications and Tracking Technology Development Program, the aim of which is to develop critical enabling technology components and products that make these future high-capacity communications links from Mars possible. The MTP Communications and Tracking Technology Development Program comprise the following ten technology development tasks: (1) reprogrammable transceiver modem for the Electra radio. (2) Mars proximity microtransceiver. (3) X-band applique for the Electra radio. (4) X-band agile beam transmitter. (5) Combined UHF/X-band proximity link antennas. (6) Large Fresnel lenses for optical ground receivers. (7) Coding system for high data-rate Mars links. (8) Fast and accurate electromagnetic (EM) modeling. (9) Adaptive data-Rates for Electra. (10) Autonomous radios for proximity links. In this paper we briefly describe each task and give a summary of progress to-date, and future plans and recommendations